The City of Johannesburg (COJ) has developed a clear roadmap to solve the billing crisis, including exact deadlines by which the problem should be resolved.
City manager Trevor Fowler says the roadmap, with details of the new processes, will be announced by 14 November.
“Service delivery by the City of Johannesburg's revenue department continues to improve, with progress being made on the migration of customer data to a single call centre system,” says the COJ.
Wooing Johannesburg
Fowler explains the city has embarked on a wide-ranging initiative to improve its finance and revenue functions - including the call centre and customer revenue management systems.
The roadmap will cover several issues, including the revenue function becoming more customer-focused through improvements in the skills and capacity of staff members.
Also, call centre and customer relations activities will be improved by ensuring services are backed up by quality IT systems; processes, systems and people-skills will be co-ordinated across the city departments; opportunities for the optimisation of the city's IT capabilities are identified to ensure adequate return on the city's investment in the IT system; and there will be strong emphasis on talent management and the nurturing of a culture of customer focus among employees in the department.
“Our objective is to win over our customers - the people of Johannesburg - with the quality of our service delivery, backed up by efficient and reliable systems,” says Fowler.
“The final system will provide the people of Johannesburg with a single-entry point for all revenue issues - and the city will, in turn, have all the details of its customers in one view.”
The development of the roadmap began in mid-September to identify various key issues and requirements to address the improvement of service delivery.
Further engagement with senior management will follow and be rounded up with the tabling of a report to the Mayoral Committee by 14 November, according to the COJ.
Full disclosure
“The city manager wants to articulate where we've come from on this matter, where we are now, where we aim to go and when we will get there,” says revenue and customer relations department spokesman at the city Kgamanyane Maphologela.
Public liaison department's communication director Gabu Tugwana says all details of the revenue problems will be shared by 14 November.
“So, saying anything now is pre-empting that. We have come forward to admit we have a problem and now we will speak about it on the 14th.” He adds there will be fixed timelines given for the resolution of the revenue issues.
Dual intervention
Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng finance spokesperson Mike Moriarty says in reply to his questions at the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe admitted to continuing problems with the council's billing system.
He adds the problems require intervention from both national and provincial governments. Moriarty welcomes the intervention, saying it is “way overdue for Joburg's billing system.
“The ongoing chaos is causing frustration, anxiety and, in some cases, hardship to customers. It also creates instability in the council's finances and service delivery operations. These problems will not be resolved until incompetent officials are fired and replaced with people willing to work tirelessly until the system is fixed.”
Packing up
Project Phakama, which saw the city move its various billing platforms onto a SAP system to provide a single view of its 1.3 million accountholders, at a cost of more than R580 million, has been a headache for many residents.
Johannesburg started implementing Phakama in November 2009, and completed the move in June 2010. However, thousands of Johannesburg accountholders complained about grossly over-inflated bills, inaccurate meter readings, illegal disconnections and a lack of service from the city's call centre.
The city has previously claimed to have resolved all the problems that stemmed from its migration to the SAP system.
However, Joburg Advocacy Group (JAG) founding member Lee Cahill says the billing crisis continues unabated and, in many cases, affects the city's most vulnerable residents.
“For the past 18 months, JAG has done everything possible to assist residents with billing disputes, to little or no avail. We've now appealed directly to the deputy minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs [Yunus Carrim] for his urgent assistance and intervention.”
The organisation says it has exhausted all options to help Johannesburg residents find corrective measures for the problems, and this is why the appeal was made to Carrim.
Cahill says frustration with the billing problems has resulted in her being the fourth of JAG's founding members to decide to leave Johannesburg.
“We can see there's regretfully no way of holding the city's administration, which has absolute control over the people who live here, to account - even in terms of the law.”
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